Corbis is one of the largest digital licensing agencies in the world, representing all types of images to licensing clients worldwide. Along with works from museums and agencies, our art collection represents a vibrant and growing roster of contemporary artists. Corbis Contemporary showcases just a taste of the work from our fine artists.

If you are a fine art photographer, painter, graphic or digital artist, or work in other media and are interested in offering your work to a global licensing audience, Corbis is now accepting portfolios for consideration.

Corbis Fine Arts Editor, Sue Hartke, answers a few questions about the new Corbis Contemporary Tumblr and the current call for artists.

Why did you decide to launch Corbis Contemporary?

I wanted to approach a broad online audience – both to get curated galleries of work by our contemporary artists out into the world, and also to invite new artists to join our growing roster of creative talent. I can spotlight fine art on corbisimages.com, but having a supplementary, independent space for contemporary art allows our clients, sales teams, artists, and the public the ability to focus on one cohesive element of Corbis’ incredibly diverse creative media.

How do you think the Tumblr platform optimizes the site?

There are a lot of great things about Tumblr – ease of use, the ability to truly spotlight visuals, its large online audience, and how quickly you can customize it to suit your needs. We wanted to have a very clean, branded Corbis art site that spotlighted the visual impact of our artists’ work, and Tumblr was the best choice. Seeing Ken Johnston’s historical photography Tumblr, The Green Cabinet, really sold it to me.

Any comments from the arts community about Tumblr or our Call for Artists approach?

We’ve gotten a lot of great feedback since the site launched just a few weeks ago, from visitors and followers, and also through a flood of portfolios coming in via the Call for Artists. What I particularly like is the global reach we’re seeing – we’ve already received portfolios from the UK, New Zealand, Mexico, Ireland, the US, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Germany, and elsewhere.

Among the new artists we’ve already signed since the Tumblr launched, we’ve gotten comments like:

– “I’m quite proud of this achievement and to be a new artist contributor.”

– “Thanks for your kind words about my images. You and Corbis have been encouraging and inspiring to me.”

– “I’ve been blown away by the warm welcome I received from Corbis :)”

This is what we were looking for with the Tumblr – being able to spotlight the incredible work of our contemporary artists, and asking a diverse community of new artists to join our roster.

Are there any current trends in Fine Art that you are especially fond of at the moment?

Oh boy, that’s a tough one as there is so much going on. For me, a couple stand out. One is obvious – and is both a good and a bad thing I guess – that the web means anyone with even an inkling of being an artist can post, chat, pin, tumble and promote their work. It’s obviously good – fine art has been its own ivory tower for so long, and now it’s being dragged into the great leavener that is the digital age like photography already has. The down side to this? There’s a lot of crap out there along with the good. Oh well. The second trend I’m heartened by is more stylistic – in that there seems to be a new move to accept classically realistic contemporary artwork again, after decades of sneering at the ‘old stuff’ versus the conceptual and abstract. It’s nice to see artists that are both technically and classically accomplished having their works collected and shown again.

Anything you would like to tell artists who are thinking about submitting a portfolio?

Join us. We’re a good licensing partner with over twenty years of experience representing fine art, and we may be able to help you sustain your work as it develops and as you continue to follow your own path in the arts. All are welcome and all have potential.